A girl named Floor ...

A Girl Named Floor …

The other week whilst in Brisbane catching up with Nick, Ramona and the boys we were also lucky enough to see Fons and Yoris again.

Now for those not in the know, Fons (not to be mistaken for the Fonz  is one of Caroline’s innumerable many relations … a cousin’s son or some such which probably has a more precise genealogical term for those that way inclined. Fons and Yoris stayed with us for a couple of weeks in Adelaide as part of their adventures travelling around the world and we had a great time. It was a happy coincidence that they would be in Brisbane at the same time that we were scheduled to be there.

We managed to hook up with them on a drizzly day (because that’s mainly what Brisvegas dished up in the week that we were there) and decided that we’d take the Brisbane ferry for a ride up and down the river, stopping at the Gallery of Modern Art for a bit of culture.

We caught up with them at the Ferry terminal and they introduced us to Flora, a Dutch girl that they’d met whilst volunteering in Indonesia or some such that had caught up with them in Australia.

It was all good, but at some time during the day Fons happened to mention to me that Flora was just the name that she happened to introduce herself as to English speakers. It turns out that her real name is Floor.

Yes, that’s right, like the thing that you walk on. Now how the hell was I supposed to meet a girl named Floor and then just say nothing? Just let it go, forget it ever happened? Not likely, but by God I bit my tongue for a long time. I walked past the sign that said “caution, wet floor” and I didn’t say a word.

Quietly I catalogued the things I could have said, not trusting myself. It was like a valve holding back the pressure. Something was going to give.

Then we lost her. She wandered into a different gallery and we were thinking about leaving and so started looking.

I said to Caroline … what do we do, go to reception and tell them we lost Floor? I could just imagine the questions coming back … “you lost the floor?”

“No not the floor, Floor. A girl … named floor … she’s not a walkover you know …”

I mean once you start dropping “the” into the name, the number of one liners increases exponentially. I just don’t think that I can write them all down here.

Just think along the lines of please don’t wipe your feet on the floor … a floor so clean you could eat off it …

And perhaps I should just leave it at that … I’m sure you can come up with plenty on your own.

Clearly someone’s parents weren’t thinking about English translations all those years ago J

The Olympic Medal Count

I’m sure that I’ve probably made some comment on this about four years ago, but I can’t be bothered going back to check out whether I did or not. So here it is. The Australian media were basically a bunch of bastards until we started to win a couple more than that first relay gold medal.

There was a lot made about the fact that as a nation we’d had high expectations that weren’t being lived up to. In reality we only had that expectation because some athletes and certainly the media beat it all up ahead of the games. So we didn’t win all the gold medals that we expected. Personally I think even fourth or fifth in the world is a remarkable achievement. So I’d like to say well done to all our athletes that even made it as far as London.

Then there’s the medal count. I happen to check a number of media sources at different times and not all of them are based here in Oz. So I find it really interesting to see that different countries establish a nation’s rankings in different manners.

Here in Australia, it was all based on how many gold medals were won, with the silver and bronze used to split it when countries were tied. I find that an astonishing way for a small nation like us to put the tally together. Based on that, we were tenth.

In the US (who won both the most medals and the most gold, they put it together based on total medals won. That put Australia in 7th. Now if I was in the Aussie media, I’d be looking to spin our performance so that it looked as good as it possibly could.

Of course there’s a couple of other ways of putting the tables together as well. There’s medals per head of population, which usually puts Australia in a better spot than we see in other counts (though places like Jamaica smash us because of their sprinters. Then there’s medals per GDP which is another interesting measure. 

I’d be curious to see medals per dollar spent on training, but I sure don’t have the time, inclination or information sources to do that.

What I did do though was put together my own count based on a gold medal being worth 3 points, silver 2 and bronze 1. It says that a medal is important, but it still provides reward for placing better. In that way, Australia also placed 7th.

The other comments I’ll offer on the London event, which I thought went very well are:

1. That I would have to call this round of the olympics the year of the slow-mo montage. I got sick to death of artistic compilations of athletes I’d never heard of (non Aussies in particular) dragging out time and time again while somewhere, somewhere else in the big old thing they call the games, there was probably live sport happening that we could have been watching. I’d estimate that the amount of live sport versus bullshit was probably edging close to 50/50. 
2. That I was ecstatic when channel 9 had the coverage ahead of channel 7, because that meant that I wasn’t going to have to listen to Bruce McAvaney, who drives me nuts. I didn’t factor in how much it would shit me to have Mark Nicholls, a pom, presenting Australian performances. The emotion he brought was simply fake. It was bad enough when he popped up for the Ashes, but this was a step too far.
3. That I should have invested in Foxtel for the event to see events I wanted to see when I wanted to see them instead of being hustled away from a hockey game in which Australia were actually playing to sit through 20 mins of pre-race bullshit for the marathon.

I might have to remind myself of that four years from now in Rio. Or hope that the ABC get’s the rights.

Real or Fake?

Get your minds out of the gutter, it’s got nothing to do with boobs.

The other night I went to say goodnight to Emily and Thomas who had been shipped off on a mission to the land of nod. First I went to Emily’s room to find her curled on her side. It was the perfect angelic picture of a sleeping cherub. 

The thing is, I know Emily so I quietly crossed the room and gave her a kiss, telling her that I loved her. Then I quietly said to her, “Now stop faking and go to sleep properly.” This brought an immediate smile as her eyes popped open, knowing that she’d been busted. I gave her a stern talking to and moved on. 

I entered Thomas’ room wondering what I’d find. Talk about contrast. There he was, flat on his back, one arm thrown above his head, mouth wide open, blissfully sleeping away. There was simply no question as to whether he was faking it or not.

There’s possibly a lesson there for the youngsters that want to pretend to be asleep, but hey, I probably shouldn’t spell it out any more than that, should I?